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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24993820">Four Nations, Four Saviors AU</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gold_Rain/pseuds/Gold_Rain'>Gold_Rain</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Avatar: The Last Airbender</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Airbender Ty Lee (Avatar), Bloodbending (Avatar), Blue Spirit Zuko (Avatar), Dark Katara (Avatar), F/F, F/M, Fugitive Ty Lee, Gen, In a way, Jet is still a no-good trouble-making hoe, Katara and Sokka are a lot more estranged, Katara is a bloodbender, M/M, Painted Lady Katara, Painted Lady Katara (Avatar), Toph is a freedom fighter, Ty Lee adopts Aang later, Zuko (Avatar) is an Idiot, Zuko is an Awkward Turtleduck, because I think it’d be cute, its adorable, we been knew</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 03:28:41</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,367</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24993820</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gold_Rain/pseuds/Gold_Rain</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Basically, this is an AU where Aang misses the ENTIRE war. Lucky bitch.</p><p>Meanwhile, Katara is a cutthroat vigilante, Toph is a Freedom Fighter, Ty Lee is an airbending fugitive, and Zuko is a theater nerd in exile who happens to be planning patricide.</p><p>And they have to work together. Fuck.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Aang &amp; Ty Lee (Avatar), Aang/Toph Beifong, Azula &amp; Zuko (Avatar), Azula/Katara (Avatar), Azula/Ty Lee (Avatar), Eventually - Relationship, Hakoda &amp; Katara &amp; Sokka (Avatar), Hakoda &amp; Sokka (Avatar), Iroh &amp; Zuko (Avatar), Katara &amp; Sokka (Avatar), Sokka/Suki (Avatar), Sokka/Suki/Yue (Avatar), Sokka/Yue (Avatar), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar), Suki/Yue (Avatar), Toph Beifong &amp; Zuko, Zuko &amp; The Fire Nation (Avatar), Zuko &amp; Zuko's Crew (Avatar), have fun - Relationship, idk, like I said have fun</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>113</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Basically, Aang is still in that iceberg.</p><p>Like, I love Aang, but if we just made him an ordinary airbender, he wouldn’t have been able to make that iceberg and he’d be dead in the ocean.</p><p>Also, if we made him dead, he’d be reincarnated, and able to help out here with the war, and...</p><p>Look, the whole point of this AU is that there is no Avatar, no destined savior, no chosen one. Just a bunch of misfits with a will and way to end the war and make peace.</p><p>If we really want Aang to be found, maybe we could have Katara or someone else find him at the end of the story, after the war, and they could laugh about how this all could’ve been avoided (hollow, painful laughter, because people have DIED), if Aang had just been found sooner.</p><p>(Who knows, maybe one of our new group would adopt him—probably Ty Lee)</p><p>Ty Lee discovers she is an airbender due to her mother’s fake ancestry and leaves the capital and then the fire nation altogether when her airbending gets out of control due to her suppressing it so much.</p><p>So Ty Lee goes to different air temples, trying to figure things out and try to understand how to control her bending.</p><p>When she leaves and travels some other nation under a fake identity, she discovers that airbender blood has been resurfacing in mixed-nationality kids since the war began, and when an airbender is revealed, they’re executed in the colonies or shunned for being targets and drawing attention to their home and people, or for being seen as strange and dangerous due to fire nation propaganda.</p><p>Ty Lee ends up amassing a small army of different-nationality kids/adults with airbending abilities and takes them to an airbending temple where they can learn to control their bending.</p><p>Toph is actually a princess in this AU. Her parents aren’t just filthy rich, they’re royalty. Seeing as the Earth Kingdom has different monarchs in different places and is pretty loose and scattered in terms of authority, this makes sense.</p><p>Toph runs away at eleven (because her parents were attempting to betroth her to some unknown rich kid) and lives on the streets or in the woods for a year, winning money in earthbending tournaments. </p><p>She meets and joins the Freedom Fighters on a whim, and develops some serious animosity towards Jet and consistently foils his plans.</p><p>Zuko gets banished and sees how his people have been affected by the war and how unnecessary it is. He discovers inconsistencies in the propaganda he’s been fed and he looks into it and proceeds to plan some casual treason.</p><p>(Azula being redeemed? Idc. </p><p>You can have it, or you could totally keep her as the mentally unstable heir who is ruthless enough to bring monarchs to their knees. </p><p>You could totally have her discover Ty Lee is a bender and never tell a soul. </p><p>You could have her and Zuko reconcile and plan patricide together. </p><p>Heck, you could even have Ozai hire someone to kill her (who gets caught and interrogated by Azula) and have Azula run when she comes to terms with the truth, or get banished because she’s too powerful and independent and he is paranoid and doesn’t want heirs he can’t control)</p><p>Katara had her mother killed in front of her in this AU. She’s seen death. She’s seen killers walk away unharmed. This makes her a much darker person later.</p><p>Katara turns fourteen, and when her father won’t let her join the war efforts and help the people she knows need help, she runs away, becoming the Painted Lady vigilante (obviously she carves and paints a mask for convenience) after she saw and helped that one town. </p><p>Maybe on her boat ride she gets kidnapped by pirates and goes through some Trauma™️ and bloodbends or something, and she kills them all or throws them in the sea to drown or die of cold and then steals their stolen water scrolls and uses their ship to travel further.</p><p>(Look, guys, this Katara isn’t cute and sweet and cuddly. She will kill and maim and do whatever it takes to survive and complete her self-assigned mission)</p><p>Sokka, in this world, is incredibly bitter towards his sister leaving him and the tribe behind, and he never decides to run after her.</p><p>Sokka runs away too, though, but he does so to become a warrior of his tribe a little while after, searching for and joining his tribe and aiding in the war effort (he ends up in prison with him too).</p><p>(Sokka finds a way out and breaks out his prison-girlfriend Suki, his dad, and s few others, because my boy is a genius and there is no way he would spend all that time in a cell and NOT come up with something.) </p><p>Also, Yue becomes the chief of her tribe, after proving herself worthy to her father and challenging traditions. She decides to ready her people for war, prepared to assist the southern water tribe in the war efforts. Because I have a NEED for more Yue in this world.</p><p>(Maybe later Sokka, as an ambassador for his tribe, meets Yue for a negotiation and they hit it off, but also with Suki at his side, who also hits it off with Yue, because this ship is my JAM)</p><p>The nations have all been individually impacted by the war, however, and the only way they can defeat the fire nation or even get to the Firelord is if they join forces.</p><p>However that happens, I’ll leave up to the imagination.</p><p>And that’s just about it for this AU. I’m leaving it pretty open-ended and loose. Rebellions can happen, invasions can happen, people can die, people can become revenge-seeking murderers driven by hate, I don’t care!</p><p>I’m just gonna. Leave this here.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Katara 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Just a bit of insight into how much her mother’s death fucked her up :3</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I’m probably just going to randomly post these little windows into this AU’s characters every now and then. You know. To give you more of a feel for the story.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The smell of charred flesh filled Katara’s nose, choking her, making her eyes sting. She was beginning to sweat from the parka she wore in the warm shelter of the igloo she stood in, but she barely noticed at all. Her eyes didn’t leave the crumpled form that lay on the ground. It was as if it was all that was left in the world to see.</p><p> </p><p>The soldier in gleaming black and red armor smiled down at the remains of the Water Tribe woman below him. He seemed amused by her lack of a struggle.</p><p> </p><p>Katara was frozen. She wanted to cry. She wanted to panic, to scream. She wanted to do anything other than what she was already doing, which was standing still and silent, and being utterly useless.</p><p> </p><p>The firebender has just killed her mother. The firebender had killed her mother because her mother had lied to protect her. The firebender had just killed a woman because she told him she could bend water.</p><p> </p><p>Katara wouldn’t remember the rest of that day, later. For the rest of her life, she would go without knowing how her younger self had been in the throes of a panic attack when her father found her. She won’t remember cuddling into her mother’s broken form and crying herself into unconsciousness. All she will remember, from that day, is the smell of death and the look in that Fire Nation soldier’s eyes.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Sokka 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sokka also gets fucked up by his mother’s death and develops an ‘I-have-to-do-everything-and-always-be-in-control’ complex :3</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sokka was no stranger to feelings of inadequacy. No, they were something he knew quite well.</p><p> </p><p>First, there was his sister, who was very quickly understood to be the only waterbender left in their tribe. She held an ancient ability, unique to their culture, that was powerful and revered. She was the one who was special—who had powers that had yet to be honed but still left him pale and wanting in comparison.</p><p> </p><p>Then there was the fact that he was the only boy his age to be left behind when his father and the southern fleet left home. There were other boys around his age that were fighting in the war, defending their home, and he was here, doing mundane tasks that barely made an impact at all on his home and his people’s well-being.</p><p> </p><p>He knew it was because he was younger than the others, even if it was only by a few years, and because he was in line for succession that he had to stay, and not because he was weaker than the others. Rationally, he knew that.</p><p> </p><p>But that would not stop the feeling of uselessness that stirred in his brain, filled his chest and clogged his throat. It would not stop him from lying awake at night, eyes stinging but unable to sleep, restless but unable to fight because there wasn’t anything <em>there</em> to fight.</p><p> </p><p>When his mother died, Sokka had been left alone to grieve. His father would’ve felt guilty if he’d thought about it, but for now, he was sure that all the man knew was that he had lost his wife and he needed to be left alone. Katara, on her part, was practically catatonic—unresponsive and indifferent, like a corpse.</p><p> </p><p>(And if that didn’t scare him more than anything...)</p><p> </p><p>Sokka had spent many nights curled up on his bed, unable to sleep, because for the first time in forever, there was no one there to tuck him in.</p><p> </p><p>It was a bit of a wake up call, really. It showed him how weak and unprepared he was. It showed him that if he was small and weak and helpless, the people he loved would die, and then he’d be left to face the world alone.</p><p> </p><p>Or, that’s what he’ll tell himself, later. So it doesn’t feel quite so meaningless.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. The Painted Lady & The Blue Spirit 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Zuko and Katara fuck shit up together as their spirit alter egos. <br/>They will eventually become friends and partners in crime which will make it that much more dramatic when Katara finds out he’s Fire Nation UwU</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was a full moon when Zuko first saw her. There had been rumors about her. About a river spirit that made crops wither and wells run dry. About a young woman with a sheer white veil covering her face and the world surging to meet the every flick of her fingertips. But nothing could have prepared him for running into her that night.</p><p> </p><p>Her cheeks were decorated with swirls and stripes of red, appearing, briefly, in the dim light, like cuts carved across her face, welling up with blood. Her eyes were hard to see, obscured by the tilting of her hat or the veil in front of her face, but he knew they were bright from the fleeting glimmer they caught from the moonlight every now and again.</p><p> </p><p>They fought together, that night. Perhaps their goals would clash some other day, and they would have to fight each other, but for now, their will was the same, and they fought side by side with a breathless vigor that never seemed to fade.</p><p> </p><p>The men that they had been attacking were strong. Most of them were sturdy, muscle-bound and well-trained firebenders. They didn’t tire easily, and eventually he could feel when the Painted Lady beside him had her patience wear a bit too thin.</p><p> </p><p>She raised her arms, strong and capable and full of righteous fury, and the men before them started to twist and fall, like puppets that had gotten their strings cut.</p><p> </p><p>There wasn’t a way to describe the feeling he’d felt that night, as he watched her burst the veins of his countrymen and leave them in the streets to die.</p><p> </p><p>It wasn’t the last time they’d meet, but it was the first and the most memorable time, that was for sure.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Windstorm 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Ty Lee living in a society that would have her killed if they knew what she was.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ty Lee had always loved storms. She used to sit outside while rain and hail pelted the earth, unflinching when lighting flashed and thunder roared. </p><p>It wasn’t the flashing lights or the loud noises or the smell of rain that drew her. It was the feeling of the wind as it swirled around her, bending trees and ripping the leaves from their branches, cold and fierce against her skin.</p><p>Her parents were always frazzled when they found her, soaking wet and blinking with wide, inquisitive gray eyes. They would take her inside and dry her off, scolding her as they sent her to bed early with a fresh pair of clothes and an emptiness in her stomach where her supper should’ve been.</p><p>Ty Lee, young and reckless as she was, never learned her lesson, though. She still snuck out to dance in the wind, opting to mostly avoid the storms that had too much lighting outside for her to be truly comfortable.</p><p>Her parents didn’t always catch her. Usually they didn’t. They had seven daughters to look after, and even with the few servants they had, it was hard to keep track of who was where.</p><p>Sometimes the wind would blow in a direction she didn’t like, ripping at the flowers in the garden and leaving pink petals scattered brokenly on the ground. </p><p>One of these times, Ty Lee felt a warm, protective anger surge within her on the behalf of her mother’s flowers. It built in her chest and spread throughout her body until she could feel it in the very tips of her tiny fingers. </p><p>Then she’d gesture at the wind to stop, fingers splaying out wide and instinctively motioning like she was trying to push the wind back, away from the garden and back out into the world.</p><p>She wasn’t really expecting anything to happen, but going through the motions anyway, like children often do, and pretending something would.</p><p>The wind changed course, for a moment or two, suddenly flowing over the garden and missing the flowerbeds entirely. It was like an invisible shield had been formed, protecting them from damage.</p><p>It smashed back down in seconds, of course, when Ty Lee’s shock registered in her mind and her arm fell, focused gaze loosening and going lax.</p><p>She didn’t tell her parents. She didn’t tell her sisters. She barely acknowledged it herself, preferring to pretend she’d never done anything at all.</p><p>Ty Lee lived in the Fire Nation, where she’d heard of people born with foreign bending being dragged from their homes by soldiers. She lived in the Fire Nation, where children were lectured by their teachers about how barbaric the Air Nomads were, how evil they were.</p><p>Ty Lee stopped going out in storms.</p>
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